muppetfandomcom-20200223-history
Talk:C Is for Cookie (CD)
Title What do you guys think about moving this page to "C" is for Cookie: Cookie's Favorite Songs? We don't usually add subtitles into our article names, but it would help to disambig from the C is for Cookie (LP) page. I also have a question about how we're treating the Is in these titles... I know it's probably technically correct to have it as C Is for Cookie, but it just looks wrong. Most of our pages have it as "C is for Cookie" -- C is for Cookie (song), C is for Cooking: Recipes from the Street, A is for Asthma and B is for Books!. This is the one title that has the form C Is for Cookie, and I'd like to change it to match the others. Is that okay? -- Danny (talk) 18:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC) :Rule dictates that it should be "Is," since verbs are capitalized (even short ones). The fact that often the titles use incorrect capitalization doesn't strike me as justification to change those where they use it correctly, just so they match. For the song itself, which is one of our oldest entries, there's no real reason for it to be lower case since we have nothing to go on as to how it was capitalized by Raposo. So I'm opposed to changing the verb, just as we've left the incorrect capitalization in other instances because that's how it appears on the cover or title card. I'm in favor of the subtitle, though (and the quotation marks around the C, again reflecting the actual title as it appears on the packaging). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 19:07, 1 April 2009 (UTC) ::I understand that that's the rule, and C is for Cookie is technically incorrect -- but it still looks wrong, and my preference would be to break the rule in this instance. It's obvious that other people feel the same way, because there's six other pages that use the lower-case "is". I don't want to break the rule in other places -- just in this specific instance of "X is for X". -- Danny (talk) 19:10, 1 April 2009 (UTC) :::As an additional note, the reprint of B is for Books!, as seen here, capitalizes "Is." This is just another case where there's inconsistency, but since our approach to titles (as opposed to character names) has been to reflect what actually appears as closely as possible (minus prefixes and, usually, subtitles), it makes sense to me to stick to that. It's not other people in the sense of other users, it's what appears on the cover. Otherwise, if we're going to ignore what appears, we might as well fix all the titles to be technically correct. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 19:13, 1 April 2009 (UTC) ::::Okay, going by the cover would work... I figured we were correcting titles. So I'm clicking around and looking for examples. Here are some titles that we could fix -- I'm writing what it actually says on the cover. ::::*''It's Hard Out Here For a Shrimp'' ::::*''Learn to Draw The Muppets'' ::::*''Muppets at sea'' ::::*''Who's Afraid Of Elmo?'' ::::*''The Bird Is The Word!'' ::::*''C ...is for Cookie!'' ::::*''For the first time'' ::::*''Big Bird discovers the Orchestra'' ::::*''What time is it on Sesame Street?'' ::::*''Sing the hit songs of Sesame Street'' ::::*''Somebody come and play'' ::::I'm cool with that, actually -- it's the kind of damn-the-torpedos attention to detail that we excel in. :) -- Danny (talk) 21:13, 1 April 2009 (UTC) :::::Yeah, I think that actually makes the most sense, even if it sometimes looks odd (but it's not *our* mistake and can even be kind of fascinating or amusing). For example, with a few of the records the titles are couched merely as a conversational sentence, not a formal label, so there's a kind of trend and logic there, while others are just off (and given the educational goals of Sesame, a bit ironic). Likewise, we have Baby Natasha in "Say Cheese!" (where the quote marks thus seem to place Natasha as part of the title in a way that the Miss Piggy ™ in the Foo-Foo book didn't), or Elmo's Easy As ABC, which is incorrect but exactly as it appears (in cases where the title is in all caps for every letter or otherwise can't be used that way, going by the rule makes sense). We might want to bring this up on Current Events, actually, see what Wendy and Scott and Ken and others have to say. I'm glad you brought this up, since it's actually occurred to me in the past that a formal discussion of how to handle weird things in titles would be worth having, but as is the way, I never got around to doing it. Then whatever the consensus is, we can note it in Policies and Guidelines, so other users and newcomers aren't confused (which is what we've done with things like name spacing and so on). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 21:26, 1 April 2009 (UTC) ::::::I don't think it makes sense to emulate the style of a book cover for an encyclopedia entry. —Scott (talk) 21:26, 1 April 2009 (UTC) :::::::In that case, going back to Danny's initial question, do we follow the grammar rule or go by what we think *looks* right? I was mostly thinking of precedent we've used when dealing with, for example, screen title cards and so on (or, for that matter, some song titles), and where quite often pages have been moved to match exactly what appears, even in a few cases where it's odd or even incorrect (I'd have to dig around through some page histories to double check exactly who moved what when, for that reason). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 21:32, 1 April 2009 (UTC) ::::::::Are there examples of cases in which we've chosen screen title capitalization over what's correct? —Scott (talk) 21:46, 1 April 2009 (UTC) :::::::::In general, we do have a history of matching the cover as closely as we can, so we've got The Ernie & Bert Book next to Ernie and Bert's Different Day. We also have I Am a Baby as well as I am a Monster. We have unusual punctuation, like Let's Go! with Elmo and Friends. We have both 1, 2, 3 Count with Me and 123 Count with Me. :::::::::For international books, we use the book cover's capitalization to fit that language's rules -- for example, Tommie en de laatste kastanjes. We've done the same for the South African books, like Moshe goes to the game reserve. :::::::::For American stuff, we've also got Letters ...and Numbers, Too!, Ernie and Bert Can...Can You? and Episode 209: Unmarried ... With Children, which use incorrect punctuation. :::::::::On the other hand, we haven't matched the title card for Episode 808: Eight Flags Over the Nursery, or Episode 111: Oh, the People You'll Meet, and we corrected Sesame Street Home Video Visits the Hospital and Meet Oofnik the Grouch. :::::::::I think our history is kind of all over the place, because we've never had a hard-and-fast rule about it. -- Danny (talk) 22:58, 1 April 2009 (UTC) ::::::::::Yeah. On incorrect formatting used in titles which we've kept, there's also Elmo's Easy As 123, Episode 107: Eight Take-Away One Equals Panic, Sesame Street LIVE!, Big Bird presents Hans Christian Andersen, Here is Your Life (not clear from the only title card on the page, but most of the sketches had it as "is"), Put Some Zing In Your Spring, Sesame Street, Special, Dr Pepper (since the brand label omits the punctuation), and more, plus cases where it's not a matter of error so much as scrupulously matching specific formatting quirks on a cover, as with Elmo's Thinking About... Sleep • Bath Time • Getting Dressed. That looks odd but it's what it says on the cover. It doesn't help that there's so much inconsistency, not on our part but from the titles themselves. ::::::::::Looking around, Episode 108: What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? has it formatted as a sentence, with only "What" capitalized, but other Muppet Babies episodes capitalize as titles. On the whole, right now, we have more examples of matching the title than otherwise (and a few, especially in Category:Bear in the Big Blue House, where there's no title card but it's inconsistent, so i's not clear if they aired like that or it was George's error), with the main exception of "The." We've generally lower-cased that, regardless of what appears; the only exception I found was It's The Muppet Show! which Scott moved back in 2007. But as is always the case, we don't have to go by what we did years ago if consensus is against it or it just no longer makes sense. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 23:06, 1 April 2009 (UTC) Here's a couple discussions that we had about matching on-screen titles: Talk:John Denver & the Muppets: A Christmas Together and Talk:The Mary Tyler Moore Show. -- Danny (talk) 00:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC) :We've also got The Muppet Show on Tour!, which really should be moved to The Muppet Show: On Tour! It looks like we've been fairly inconsistent about this. -- Danny (talk) 00:09, 2 April 2009 (UTC) ::I personally prefer to go with the "correct" grammatical choice for things like capitalizing "Is" and not "For". I remember other pages where the decision has gone the other way though and I think it's more important to be consistent. I think a lot of our "examples" here are just titles we haven't caught up with. ::On the other hand, where the choice is stylistic (& vs. "and") I think the best choice is the book cover, album title or whatever. So in this particular case I would vote for the title "C" Is for Cookie. -- Wendy (talk) 01:57, 2 April 2009 (UTC) :::No, oddly, I sifted through the history or discussions when selecting the examples, and nearly all were either deliberately created that way (and by reliable users, often Danny or Scott or Guillermo or I think even myself once) or moved to reflect the cover/title image (i.e. A is for Asthma was moved grammatically but then moved back when the resource video was put online, with the title card showing the lower-case "is"). Those which are uncertain are mostly in Bear in the Big Blue House episodes and something like "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow," which I left out precisely for that reason. Outside of some of those, most of the provable user-created errors (both grammatically incorrect and not supported by a cover or title card) have already been fixed. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 02:44, 2 April 2009 (UTC) ::::In fact, while it won't make a difference as far as what we decide, looking around and cleaning up definite errors, I keep finding more deliberate cases, such as Please Do Not Open this Book! (Scott created it in 2006; Danny moved it in 2007 but then realized that's how the cover had it and moved it back). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 03:02, 2 April 2009 (UTC) :::::I think we should move that to PLEASE DO NOT OPEN this Book! An Interactive Book Based on the MonsteR at the end of this book. —Scott (talk) 03:15, 2 April 2009 (UTC) :::::::You left out "Celebrating 35 Years of Monster-Filled Fun" and "Oh, I am so scared of Monsters!!!" -- Andrew Leal (talk) 03:19, 2 April 2009 (UTC) ::::::::Sorry I'm late; I was messing with some Japanese Bob records I found. Anyway, I figured I should say something, since we're talking about a CD cover. I thought we had talked about this before, but I can't remember where I saw it. I think a lot of the record and book covers are printed the way they are for a stylistic effect, not to be capitalized properly. A lot of the early LP's are written as if they're sentences, and yet the spines and labels are in all caps, so I think we should treat them as normally as we can. The same goes for titles that are written in all caps, but with larger first letters. I think we can use common sense, and work out what they should be. As far as using ellipses and dashes and dots and colons in the titles, that might take more discussion, but that's how I feel about it. -- Ken (talk) 06:14, 2 April 2009 (UTC) What we did in the past isn't as important as what we decide now. We've been inconsistent; we always are until we realize it and then figure out an intentional policy. We just need to come up with something that makes sense. So, the thing is: Whatever rules we come up with, we're gonna have to sift through some of these examples and figure out how those rules are going to apply. People want to fix capitalization. Do we want to fix punctuation too? Also, there are the weird ones, like Sesame Street LIVE! and Elmo's Thinking About... Sleep • Bath Time • Getting Dressed. Any thoughts on those? -- Danny (talk) 07:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC) :If I can throw my hat in, I tend to be on the side of using the proper grammatical capitalization for titles. I think it adds consistency and also lends a more encyclopedic feel. I'm trying to think of how a title would appear in a card catalog, for example. :As for punctuation, that's probably a touchier issue. I agree with Wendy regarding allowing the flexibility to use things like "&" vs "and" depending on how it is used in the title. I know it's not a Muppet property, but as an example, Lilo & Stitch is always titled with the ampersand. I haven't really put much thought around ellipses, dashes, colons, etc. and agree with Ken that it requires more discussion. But if there is punctuation at the end of a title, my understanding is that we should include that (i.e. "!" or "?"). The "!" in Oklahoma!, for example, is always considered part of the title. -- Peter (talk) 14:35, 2 April 2009 (UTC) ::I agree with Peter. We should do the grammatically correct thing for capitalization. I think we should include ampersands when the title uses ampersands. I don't know what to do for colons. Danny just added one for The Muppet Show: On Tour, but there isn't one in the title like there is in the title card for Coming Home: Military Families Cope with Change. I think we should handle those on a case-by-cases basis. I would say the same for ellipses and dashes. I don't want to have us agree on one rule for all of those and apply it to titles where it doesn't make sense for the article. —Scott (talk) 16:44, 2 April 2009 (UTC) :::I think it might help to come up with a rule for when to include subtitles and how to separate them (colon, dash, etc.) from the main title, though. The Muppet Show: On Tour is a good example of where this would be necessary, as is Bear in the Big Blue House: Live on Stage. We seem to generally be using colons for this, which works for me. And as for ellipses, we can discuss where they should be used on a case-by-case basis, but can we come up with a standard for how the spacing works around them? We have some instances with no spaces, some with a space before but not after, some with the opposite, and some with spaces on both ends. I always thought it was no spaces, but I'm not sure. -- Peter (talk) 17:07, 2 April 2009 (UTC)